Conversations with a Chartered Accountant
In our previous article on this topic – The Gender Diversity in Blockchain Technology — we learned about how there are lesser women pursuing blockchain technology than can be. Having said that, there are many women who are carving a niche for themselves in this industry. At Hard Fork, we intend to bring to light the amazing contribution of some of the women trailblazers and thought leaders in the Blockchain space.
We were happy and humbled to see that there are many women leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals who are not only taking an avid interest in the technology but also working on building companies, products, services, businesses in it. Many of them are mentoring other aspiring women entrepreneurs; it is encouraging to see so many more women getting inspired by their peers and coming forward to embrace this tech.
Ep 1 — The Changing role of Chartered Accountants, among other things
In our first episode of this special series, we invited Aanchal Thakur, a chartered accountant by profession, and who has spent the past couple of years in understanding this technology and is creating a niche for herself in this space.
We had also spoken to another experienced Chartered Accountant, Anoush Bhasin, in our first Season. While Anoush enlightened us with the taxation paradigm, some questions remained unanswered.
Also Read | The Unknown truths About Crypto Taxation in India
- How would the role of a chartered accountant change when blockchain becomes all-pervasive?
- With the regulatory uncertainty in India, what should blockchain and crypto startups, who do not want to leave the country, do?
- How stringent are the FATF rules for crypto?
- Would FATF implementation promote ease of doing crypto business globally?
We posed these questions to our guest Aanchal Thakur - the conversation with her was intriguing.
Our conversation
Aanchal's nearly a decade of experience, mostly in technology companies and her core knowledge of accounting policies and processes not only from India but also from other countries, led to some interesting insights.
FATF Crypto Guidelines
The readers should know, that there are many financial authorities around the world that are actively working in this field and one of them is FATF — the Financial Action Task Force. The FATF signatories met recently and issued some guidelines for cryptocurrency regulations for countries wanting to adopt the same in their financial systems.
While the FATF has only laid out some guidelines, it does not force any country to adopt or implement it. Moreover, the current system of financial information sharing between countries is a tedious process and procuring any data from a country may take days or even months.
This challenge will become more pronounced, when the data needs to be shared in real-time, from different time zones and from different sources and that too immutable data on a distributed database. Sharing of Blockchain-based credible financial information /data between countries for forensic and regulatory use, can become even more tedious and, probably an implementation nightmare for technologists and policymakers.
Hence FATF guideline implementation can take a lot of time.
Chartered Accountants and their education
Aanchal is very vocal about the fact that the chartered accountants need to come out of their comfort zones and start exploring each emerging technology which will eventually disrupt the global financial system and probably make their profession redundant.
She also highlighted that there has been a sea change in the mindsets of her fraternity. People from her fraternity and beyond are coming out of their closets and taking part in the change. The Institute of Chartered Accountant is also conducting regular training programs for its members, to introduce them to the intricacies of Blockchain and crypto.
However, instead of doing a post-qualification introduction to Blockchain, the Blockchain education should become a part and parcel of their regular studies and also the examination that the ICAI conducts.
About Hard Fork 'Specials'
Hard Fork Specials is a shorter version of our talk show which we will undertake from time to time. These short and special series of episodes will highlight either a burning or important topic, a new technology, special set of people or something special to showcase the Crypto and Blockchain scene in India as well as overseas.
Women in Blockchain is the first of these specials.
- Watch the Season 1 here: Hard Fork Season 1
- Email: [email protected] | [email protected]
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